Behavioural thermal regulation explains pedestrian path choices in hot urban environments
Due to phenomena such as urban heat islands, outdoor thermal comfort of the cities' residents emerges as a growing concern. A major challenge for mega-cities in changing climate is the design of urban spaces that ensure and promote pedestrian thermal comfort. Understanding pedestrian behavioura...
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sg-ntu-dr.10356-1632802023-05-19T07:31:18Z Behavioural thermal regulation explains pedestrian path choices in hot urban environments Melnikov, Valentin R. Christopoulos, Georgios I. Krzhizhanovskaya, Valeria V. Lees, Michael H. Sloot, Peter M. A. Nanyang Business School Future Cities Laboratory, Singapore-ETH Centre Complexity Institute, NTU Engineering::Environmental engineering Coping Behavior Decision Making Due to phenomena such as urban heat islands, outdoor thermal comfort of the cities' residents emerges as a growing concern. A major challenge for mega-cities in changing climate is the design of urban spaces that ensure and promote pedestrian thermal comfort. Understanding pedestrian behavioural adaptation to urban thermal environments is critically important to attain this goal. Current research in pedestrian behaviour lacks controlled experimentation, which limits the quantitative modelling of such complex behaviour. Combining well-controlled experiments with human participants and computational methods inspired by behavioural ecology and decision theory, we examine the effect of sun exposure on route choice in a tropical city. We find that the distance walked in the shade is discounted by a factor of 0.86 compared to the distance walked in the sun, and that shadows cast by buildings have a stronger effect than trees. The discounting effect is mathematically formalised and thus allows quantification of the behaviour that can be used in understanding pedestrian behaviour in changing urban climates. The results highlight the importance of assessment of climate through human responses to it and point the way forward to explore scenarios to mitigate pedestrian heat stress. Published version 2022-11-30T02:42:44Z 2022-11-30T02:42:44Z 2022 Journal Article Melnikov, V. R., Christopoulos, G. I., Krzhizhanovskaya, V. V., Lees, M. H. & Sloot, P. M. A. (2022). Behavioural thermal regulation explains pedestrian path choices in hot urban environments. Scientific Reports, 12(1), 2441-. https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-06383-5 2045-2322 https://hdl.handle.net/10356/163280 10.1038/s41598-022-06383-5 35165328 2-s2.0-85124625013 1 12 2441 en Scientific Reports © The Author(s) 2022. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. application/pdf |
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Engineering::Environmental engineering Coping Behavior Decision Making Melnikov, Valentin R. Christopoulos, Georgios I. Krzhizhanovskaya, Valeria V. Lees, Michael H. Sloot, Peter M. A. Behavioural thermal regulation explains pedestrian path choices in hot urban environments |
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Due to phenomena such as urban heat islands, outdoor thermal comfort of the cities' residents emerges as a growing concern. A major challenge for mega-cities in changing climate is the design of urban spaces that ensure and promote pedestrian thermal comfort. Understanding pedestrian behavioural adaptation to urban thermal environments is critically important to attain this goal. Current research in pedestrian behaviour lacks controlled experimentation, which limits the quantitative modelling of such complex behaviour. Combining well-controlled experiments with human participants and computational methods inspired by behavioural ecology and decision theory, we examine the effect of sun exposure on route choice in a tropical city. We find that the distance walked in the shade is discounted by a factor of 0.86 compared to the distance walked in the sun, and that shadows cast by buildings have a stronger effect than trees. The discounting effect is mathematically formalised and thus allows quantification of the behaviour that can be used in understanding pedestrian behaviour in changing urban climates. The results highlight the importance of assessment of climate through human responses to it and point the way forward to explore scenarios to mitigate pedestrian heat stress. |
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Nanyang Business School |
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Nanyang Business School Melnikov, Valentin R. Christopoulos, Georgios I. Krzhizhanovskaya, Valeria V. Lees, Michael H. Sloot, Peter M. A. |
format |
Article |
author |
Melnikov, Valentin R. Christopoulos, Georgios I. Krzhizhanovskaya, Valeria V. Lees, Michael H. Sloot, Peter M. A. |
author_sort |
Melnikov, Valentin R. |
title |
Behavioural thermal regulation explains pedestrian path choices in hot urban environments |
title_short |
Behavioural thermal regulation explains pedestrian path choices in hot urban environments |
title_full |
Behavioural thermal regulation explains pedestrian path choices in hot urban environments |
title_fullStr |
Behavioural thermal regulation explains pedestrian path choices in hot urban environments |
title_full_unstemmed |
Behavioural thermal regulation explains pedestrian path choices in hot urban environments |
title_sort |
behavioural thermal regulation explains pedestrian path choices in hot urban environments |
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2022 |
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https://hdl.handle.net/10356/163280 |
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1772826159239659520 |